فصل 12

CHAPTER 12

The Lie

I NEED TO MAKE MYSELF SMALLER

I went to a conference last year—the kind of thing where a life guru stands on stage and walks you through guided meditation or yells at you to believe in yourself.

I loved every single second of it.

As I constantly analyze how I can grow and become a better version of myself, I appreciate wisdom wherever I can get it. No one person can be your source for all the answers, but you can glean a handful of powerful thoughts here and a dash of insight there. I hope you get some great tangible advice from me, but I don’t for one moment believe that you’re going to take every single thing in these pages as gospel.

So I read the books and listen to the podcasts, and when someone I admire fills an arena nearby for a few days of wisdom, you better believe I’m buying a ticket. It was during an experience like this that I had a powerful insight into something about myself I never expected.

“Which parent did you crave love from more?” the speaker asked the crowd. “Not which parent did you love more . . . Which one did you crave love from more?”

My dad.

I would assume that this is true for many women, but it’s definitely the truth for me. And here’s the thing I’ve done a lot of therapy, and much of it was so I could work through questions like this one. So when he asked the audience whom we craved love from the most, my answer was my dad. But, I already knew that, no great surprise there.

Then he asked the follow-up question that changed everything.

“And who did you have to be for them?”

Meaning, what did you believe as a child that you needed to do to receive that parent’s love?

“Successful,” I grumbled to myself. This was not news to me. As I’ve already mentioned, I understood all about how being a “performer” had affected my life as an adult.

“Besides that,” the man on stage asked, “what else did you have to be?”

“Small.”

It fell out of my mouth without conscious thought. Before that moment, I can tell you I had never, ever considered that concept before.

Where did that come from? What did I even mean by it?

I sat back in my chair and considered it for the first time in my life.

I believe my father was always proud of me, but he wasn’t verbal with that praise unless I did something well. As a hard worker himself, he appreciated the achievement. Simultaneously, because he’d never had a great example of what it meant to be a good dad, he had nothing to go by. He had no idea what to do with little kids. My memory is that as children, we understood we should be seen and not heard. I learned quickly not to make a fuss—not to make noise at all if it wasn’t what he wanted. Sometimes he wanted to interact, to have conversations or even play. But most of the time he wanted silence.

As I got older I was aware of the disparity more and more.

Little girl.

That was what he called me . . . and not as an endearment.

Little girl, you have no clue what you’re talking about.

Little girl, the real world is going to eat you alive.

Little girl, you’d better grow up quick.

Little girl became an expletive. I hated when he called me that but never truly understood how it affected me before that day at the conference. And not just negatively, but positively as well. I wouldn’t be who I am were it not for my childhood. I wouldn’t be where I am without the work ethic instilled in me by my father. The same man who praised my achievement might have unintentionally taught me to chase it a bit too much, but you can’t blame the past for the things that went wrong if you aren’t also willing to be thankful for the things that went right. Digging into the whys of how I behave as an adult are what make me able to overcome unhealthy habits.

Take, for example, how uncomfortable I used to become when speaking about my job. If you asked me at a party what I did for a living, I’d say something dismissive like, “Oh, I have a lifestyle blog.” Never mind the fact that I built a media company from the ground up and manage a staff of eleven. Never mind that our clients are some of the biggest brands on earth. Never mind that the website gets millions of visitors a month or that I’m an author and public speaker while also raising babies. It feels boastful to mention those things; it feels like I might make you uncomfortable if I speak about them.

A larger part of why I don’t want to be boastful is because I learned a long time ago that I was a little girl who had no clue what she was talking about. Being big while also being small is an impossible task for anyone. As I sat at the conference that day, I understood how that dilemma had colored so much of who I had become.

As a company we have been offered so many large opportunities over the last few years, and I’d found one excuse after another to turn them down. I worried that we would disappoint our clients. I worried that we would fail. I worried that I wasn’t smart enough to lead the team into new territory.

It’s hard to write it down now because I spend so much time telling other women to chase their big dreams. And if you had asked me, of course I would have told you that we were daring ourselves to grow by leaps and bounds. But when I took a real look at my life and my company, I recognized the truth I was making myself small. I was performing just enough to gain your attention but not truly being myself for fear of what everyone might think of the real me.

Who am I really?

I’m a wife and a mother, and I also dream of being a true media mogul. I am working to grow my lifestyle media agency to incredible heights. I dream of having enough revenue so that all of these incredible people who work for me—who took a chance on helping with my dream—can own their own homes, pay off their student loans, and take long, dreamy vacations somewhere sunny. I dream of starting a nonprofit that supports other women who want to chase down dreams of their own. I’m working to build a company my children will grow up and work at too. I think the media we consume can positively impact our lives, and by creating media that uplifts and encourages women, we can literally change the world.

I have so many goals and dreams for myself, and not one of them is small. They’re big and wild and full of hope. They require faith and courage and a whole lot of audacity. I cannot get there, I will not get there, unless I start embracing every side of my character—including the sides of me that make other people uncomfortable.

This is what occurred to me at the conference that day I cannot continue to live as half of myself simply because it’s hard for others to handle all of me.

I was at another conference just a few weeks ago when I saw this playing out in other women around me. Four hundred inspiring, entrepreneurial-minded women, and I kept hearing them saying the same things over and over

“Well, this is just my hobby.”

“This is just something I do on the side.”

“My job is being a mom, but this is a great side gig.”

Y’all, these were not women casually selling antiques from their garage on Etsy. These women were running businesses and teams. Some of them were making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, yet I heard the word hobby over and over.

It made me realize I am not the only woman who is making herself small to make others feel more comfortable.

It’s hard for people who don’t understand us to be fully supportive. When you boil it down, that’s the heart of the problem with my father. He couldn’t understand what to do with a small child, let alone a girl. Since he didn’t understand me, he often unintentionally muted the parts of me that made him uncomfortable.

Working women sometimes have to fight their way through patriarchal systems. Working mothers get backlash from in-laws or parents who can’t understand our desire to work, while stay-at-home moms slam us for being away from our children. I’ll bet stay-at-home moms feel similarly judged by working women who can’t relate to their life choices. It’s as though we’re all children on a playground trying to say whatever others want to hear, trying to hide all the parts that others might not understand. It makes me wonder how many women are walking around living in half their personality and in doing so, denying who their Creator made them to be.

Do you really think God made you—uniquely, wonderful you—in hopes you would deny your true self because it might be off-putting to others? I can’t believe that’s true. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I believe that God made me this way. He knew I would have a worker’s heart, and he knew I would want to build big dreams. In the same way, he knew another one of his children was meant to stay home and raise her beautiful babies, while another daughter of his wouldn’t want to have kids at all.

Have you spent a lifetime muting yourself for fear of what others will think? Are you an entrepreneur who calls your business a hobby because you worry about what your mother-in-law will say or because it’s safer to keep everyone’s expectations low? Are you hesitating to go back to school because you think you’re not smart enough? Do you stop yourself from daring to try something new because you’re already positive you’ll fail? Do you remain silent when you have so much to say? Do you believe you’ll never do better or be better than you are right now because of your family of origin? Do you hesitate to admit your dreams aloud because you’re nervous about others making fun of you or judging you for your choices?

Girl.

I lived in fear of this for years. I worried that if you knew how much I love to work you might call into question how I can do any of those things while being a successful mother. I’ve had too many people question my commitment to my children over the last ten years, and it influenced what I came to believe about being a working woman. It was a long battle from mommy guilt to acceptance, and I was only ever able to work through it after we adopted our daughter. When she was about six weeks old, I had to go on a business trip; and while I was gone someone asked me about mommy guilt as a working mom. It’s a question that comes up a lot and one that I bet most mothers—regardless of whether they stay home with their babes or choose to work—have grappled with.

I’ve thought about it a lot over the last ten years of motherhood, and even more so now that I’m raising a daughter.

And here’s what I’ve decided . . .

I refuse to teach her this narrative.

I absolutely refuse to raise her with the ideal that only one parent is ultimately responsible for who she will become. I was raised by two working parents and the proverbial village.

I will not consent to the belief that having a mother with a full-time job means that she’s not loved and well cared for.

I will not set her up to believe that having a career (or not) has anything to do with how much she’s committed to her partner or how much she loves her children . . . should she choose to have either.

I will not tell her that a man’s work is only out in the world or that a woman’s work is inside the home. If she chooses to stay at home, then we will support her with all our hearts; but we will never teach her that there’s only one kind of woman to be.

This is important because her brothers will be told by society that their options are endless, and she will be shown by media that her world is limited.

I know this for many reasons, but mostly because her daddy has never one time been asked if he feels guilty for having a job.

As she grows, my daughter will learn things out in the world that I wish she didn’t—I cannot control that—but I can control the kind of woman I set as an example. I, her mother, believe that Noah, my daughter, is fearfully and wonderfully made by a God who imagined her place in this world long before either of us was born.

I believe the same thing about you.

I believe that you are not a mistake—and feeling guilt about who you are (working, staying at home, overweight, underweight, overeducated, uneducated, emotional, bookish, street-smart, or whatever) does a disservice to yourself and the Creator who made you.

There are hundreds of ways to lose yourself, but the easiest of them all is refusing to acknowledge who you truly are in the first place.

You—the real you—is not an accident.

Those dreams you have for yourself are not silly; they are the road map to your divine calling! Don’t sit this one out. Don’t let someone else’s opinion of you determine your worth. Don’t miss out on the chance to live the life of incredible possibility in front of you.

You were not made to be small.

You are not a little girl.

You are a grown woman, and it’s time you grew up. Become exactly who God calls you to be.

THINGS THAT HELPED ME . . .

1. A willingness to offend. I don’t mean offend as in “tell a bunch of yo mama jokes.” I mean embrace the idea that not everyone can understand or approve of you, including those closest to you. If you’re a people-pleaser like I was, this is especially hard because my instinct is to ensure that everyone likes me at all times. So I decided to get out of my own way and stop focusing so much on what anyone else thought. I focus on being the best, most loving version of myself—but whether or not you approve of that isn’t my concern.

2. A bold statement. For me, it was a tattoo. I’d secretly wanted one for years, but I was worried about what others would think. Then I had an epiphany I get to decide who I am. Every single day we’re alive, we’re choosing this life and this persona. We choose to be the stay-at-home mom who loves baking and Pilates. We choose to be a hipster who loves coffee shops and artisan goods. We choose to be a lawyer who runs marathons and only eats organic. Every single aspect of our persona, no matter how long we’ve rocked it, is a choice we make every day. This was a massive eye-opener for me. And as odd as it sounds, when I realized this and it hit me right between the eyes, the very first thought I had was, I’m getting a wrist tattoo!

3. An encounter with a guru. Many times I need the insight of a podcast, a book, or a conference to gain perspective. If you wonder if you are muting a side of yourself, or if there are things you know you want to work on, start consuming content that speaks to that specific area. You may not adopt every word of what you hear or read, but you’ll certainly garner a bit of wisdom to help you with your season.